NEWPORT NETWORKS CHAIRMAN TERRY MATTHEWS TO PRESENT VISION FOR NEXT GENERATION NETWORKS AT FALL VON 2004

Chepstow UK, 11 October 2004: Terry Matthews, chairman and co-founder of Newport Networks Group plc (LSE-NNG) today announces plans to visit Fall Von 2004 in Boston later this month where he will present his view of the rapidly changing global communications landscape. Newport has recently launched its 1460 session border controller, signaling the arrival of the first true carrier-class SBC solution for next generation networks.

Listed on the London Stock Exchange, Newport Networks is the only developer of session controllers to be publicly quoted worldwide. The LSE floatation was around eight times oversubscribed and has been hailed by investment commentators as a vote of confidence in VoIP technology.

Newport's 1460 allows service providers to connect, control and charge for voice and multimedia IP traffic while enabling the same quality of service associated with the PSTN. The 1460 is a fully scalable solution with the capacity to handle the volumes of traffic generated by carrier-class infrastructures. It has been conceived, designed and built from the ground up to be deployed in carrier network infrastructures, delivering 99.999% availability with no single point of failure.

"Newport Networks is ready to accelerate the VoIP revolution", says Matthews. "We're now seeing major carriers around the world announcing plans to execute their strategies for VoIP deployment. The Newport Networks 1460 has been specifically designed to enable carriers to offer profitable end-to-end IP services and the technical capabilities of the 1460 significantly exceed anything else on the market today."

Deployed in the core and at the edge of the network, the Newport Networks 1460 addresses all the key security issues facing VoIP service providers while monitoring and regulating media flow. As well as Tier 1 carriers, it is applicable to broadband ISP's and 3G Mobile service providers.

Mr. Matthews' attendance at the Boston event also follows the announcement of a major global reseller agreement with Marconi Corporation (LSE-MONI/NASDAQ-MRCIY) which will see the 1460 incorporated into Marconi's SoftSwitch platform. "Our agreement with a major softswitch vendor confirms the carrier-class credentials of the Newport Networks 1460" says CEO John Everard, who co- founded Newport in 2000.

The Newport Networks team is backed by many decades of high visibility achievement in the commercialization of new voice and networking technologies. Mr. Matthews is a well-known figure in the world telecoms community, having previously founded Mitel, Newbridge Networks and March Networks.

Now a significant investor in VoIP, he predicted in a recent BBC interview that: "The next five years will see a dramatic technology shift to broadband systems, solutions and applications for businesses and residences. BT (British Telecom), for instance, has captured it with a hard schedule of dates for delivery.... I think that in the next twelve months every major nation, every major operator, will have hard announcements to make."

NOTES

Newport Networks Group plc presents the 1460 session controller at Booth 121, Fall Von 2004 Conference and Exposition, Hynes Convention Center, Boston MA 18th-21st October. Terry Matthews is scheduled to speak at 1015 local time on Tuesday 19th October. He will be available for media interviews during the afternoon. Interview requests should be made to TM Communications and Media by e-mail or telephone.